Case Number 20587: Small Claims Court

DEAD SPACE: AFTERMATH (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

Twinkle, twinkle, little star...

The Case

Feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt since I only dabble in
gaming and have limited experience, but Dead Space is easily one of the
most enjoyable videogames I've ever played. It is eight solid hours of creepy
atmosphere, outer space thrills, gallons of virtual blood, jump scares
terrifying enough to make you go fetal, and surprisingly compelling (albeit
derivative) science fiction storytelling. The game is set 500 years in the
future on the USG Ishimura, an intergalactic mining vessel on a mission
in orbit around a planet named Aegis VII. After sending out a distress signal,
the Ishimura is located by the crew of the USG Kellion. Engineer
Isaac Clark and the rest of Kellion's crew find disaster aboard
Ishimura. Most of the crew is dead, the ship is severely damaged, and
twisted zombie-like creatures called Necromorphs are roaming its decks. As
Clarke, the player completes a series of missions in an effort to stabilize the
ship, find out what happened to the crew, and escape in one piece. Much carnage
ensues as Clarke uses space-aged mining gear like plasma cutters and
laser-guided circular saw blades to decimate the tentacled Necromorphs trying to
tear him to pieces. Eventually, he learns that the catastrophe is linked to the
discovery on Aegis VII of a massive, 65-million-year-old monolith called the
Marker, which has meaning for the fanatical Church of Unitology that believes
human life was created by aliens.

The release of Dead Space in October of 2008 was accompanied by the
release of a mediocre direct-to-video animated prequel movie called Dead
Space: Downfall that told the story of the terrible events on
Ishimura prior to Kellion's arrival. Now that Dead Space 2
is debuting on Xboxes and Playstation 3s, we're treated to another mediocre
direct-to-video animated feature set after the events of the first game and
before those of the sequel.

Four survivors rescued from the CDC O'Bannon -- a ship sent to
stabilize Aegis VII after the catastrophic events of Dead Space -- are
taken to The Sprawl, a space station built into a remnant of Titan, one of
Saturn's moons. From there, the flick transitions into a quartet of flashbacks
as each survivor relates the group's experiences on Aegis VII to a team of
government bureaucrats with mysterious motives. Former O'Bannon security
chief Nicholas Kuttner is haunted by visions of his dead daughter, Vivian. His
delusional state appears connected to his discovery of a shard of the Marker on
Aegis VII. One-armed engineer Alejandro Borges provides more insight into
Kuttner's violent insanity, and the destruction caused on O'Bannon after
the explosion of Aegis VII. Senior science officer and Unitologist Nolan Stross
details his investigations into the nature of the shard, and the presence of
Necromorphs on O'Bannon. Finally, medical officer Isabel Cho tells of her
team's encounter with Necromorphs and their go-for-broke attempt to destroy the
shard.

Dead Space: Aftermath occupies an untenable position: It is a science
fiction horror movie that has exactly zero hope of matching the intensity of the
thoroughly immersive video game series on which it is based. Ostensibly, its
goal is to fill in some of the gaps of the Dead Space mythology, allowing us a
broader view of the game's futuristic world. The movie is so dull (as was
Dead Space: Downfall), however, that it feels more like a crass marketing
ploy than an honest-to-goodness scifi-horror adventure. This is only exacerbated
by the fact that the movie doesn't end so much as fizzle into a lame teaser for
Dead Space 2.

Dead Space: Aftermath aspires to be a Rashomon-like,
perspective-bending mystery but its four stories unfurl in chronological order
with little overlap and few conflicts in details. One never questions the truth
of any of the tales. What you see is what you get, and what you get isn't all
that compelling. The straight-forward nature of the narrative renders the shifts
in animation style (each of the four segments has its own look) not only
unnecessary but annoying because of the time spent acclimating to each
character's new look at the beginning of the segments. The hokey 3D computer
animation used for the framing segments on the Sprawl don't even compare
favorably to cheap television animation let alone the stunning visual design of
the games.

In addition to those fundamental problems, the movie suffers (as did Dead
Space: Downfall) from an endless cascade of needless profanity, included
only to remind viewers that this isn't a cartoon for kiddies (as though the
space zombies and buckets of blood weren't indication enough). The swearing
isn't offensive so much as pointless and lame.

Whatever its flaws, the movie looks great in high definition (with the
exception of the 3D computer animated material, which would look weak at any
resolution). The transfer is 1080p in the AVC codec, and framed at 1.78:1.
Colors are bold and vibrant, while motion is artifact free. Audio is presented
in a decent Dolby TrueHD mix that gets the job done, but isn't nearly as
atmospheric as the game, which makes brilliant use of the rear soundstage to amp
up the creep factor and occasionally scare the snot out of you.

The only supplement on the disc is a trailer for Dead Space 2 that'll
only make you wish the movie looked as fantastic as the game.

If you want to experience the world of Dead Space, stick with the games.
This animated movie is entirely forgettable.